{"id":75456,"date":"2024-12-04T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=75456"},"modified":"2024-12-04T08:31:19","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T13:31:19","slug":"karuk-tribe-climate-danielle-touma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/karuk-tribe-climate-danielle-touma\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping the Karuk Tribe in California Prepare for Climate Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Danielle
Danielle Touma hopes the partnership will create a blueprint for other scientists to work with Indigenous populations. (Credit: Danielle Touma)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note: Meet all five winners of our 2024 Women In Science Incentive Prize here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danielle Touma is no stranger to drought. The research professor at University of Texas, Austin, was born in Lebanon and grew up in the drought-prone Middle East. Touma\u2019s childhood shaped her career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I did my civil engineering undergrad I focused on water resources, and a lot of the things we talked about in class reminded me of the conditions we had growing up,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it all came together later on in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Touma, who has a PhD in earth system sciences, has spent her career working to understand how extreme climate events<\/a> have changed in a warming world. She uses model simulations and statistics to understand the changes in the frequency, duration and geographic areas of wildfires, droughts and heavy rain. But she\u2019s recently taken a different turn and stepped out from the research lab and into the field \u2013 into Karuk territory, a tribe in Northern California, to be exact.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Related<\/h4>\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n \n Announcing Our Women In Science Incentive Prize Winners\n <\/a>\n <\/h3>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n

Touma was doing her postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, modeling wildfire risk, when she was approached by a University of Washington academic to help with a joint NCAR project. \u201cThis person has really deep ties to the Karuk tribe and was developing a hydrology model for the tribe. They wanted to understand more about wildfire risk in the territory and they knew I was working on that already, so they brought me into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She visited the tribe last June, and it \u201ccemented\u201d her goal of helping the tribe understand the wildfire risks they faced. \u201cI realized I wanted to continue working with them. They want to understand what these risks mean for their cultural practices and their livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change has been proven to impact the food sources<\/a> of tribes across the U.S., affecting the supply and quality of traditional foods. Tribal nations are disproportionately impacted<\/a> by climate change \u2013 including extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and threats to traditional livelihoods. Tribes have been stewards of the Earth for centuries, possessing an in-depth knowledge of the land and ocean, but climate change is making weather increasingly unpredictable.<\/a> The number of large fires \u2013 ones that damage 10,000 acres or more \u2013 has increased in California<\/a> in the past two decades, with 10 of the largest fires burning in 2020 and 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Touma\u2019s aim is to help the Karuks prepare for the climate challenges they\u2019re facing. \u201cThey know the minute details of how their land works,\u201d she says,\u201d and how everything comes together \u2013 hydrologically, ecologically, culturally. They know what\u2019s good for their land.\u201d Tribes are better at managing the land because they simply have more experience doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She plans to develop a climate projection framework that integrates tribal climate and land observations with Earth system model simulations \u2013 essentially combining modern science with traditional ecological knowledge<\/a>. The result will empower the tribe to quantify future wildfire, drought and extreme rainfall risks in Karuk territory, and enable them to assess best methods for dealing with the risk \u2013 such as carrying out prescribed burning<\/a> to limit wildfires. \u201cThat will be new for me,\u201d adds Touma, \u201ctranslating what I know about extremes from these global climate models and regional climate models to how they can be used on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Touma says she’s excited to work with the tribe, and hopes the partnership will create a blueprint for other scientists to work with Indigenous populations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCo-creating research with scientists and tribal communities is really what we need to be doing to address extreme weather risks.\u201d ◼️<\/p>\n\n\n

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Danielle Touma has stepped out of the lab and into Karuk territory, where she’s assisting the tribe in identifying wildfire, drought and extreme rainfall risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":75409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":false,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[20278,20279,22314,19479],"class_list":["post-75456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-climate-change","tag-environmental-science","tag-indigenous-knowledge","tag-women-in-science"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHelping the Karuk Tribe in California Prepare for Climate Challenges<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Danielle Touma is assisting the Karuk tribe in identifying wildfire, drought, extreme rainfall risks, in a unique partnership.\" 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